Non-volatile storage devices, such as Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick™, flash memory, solid-state drive (SSD), portable hard drive, etc., provide a convenient medium for users to store and transfer computer files. However, these devices, acting as a transporter of computer files, are also very prone to be infected with computer viruses and other malicious programs, when they are plugged into a computer system to upload or download a computer file. The risk of infection is high when people use a public computer to access their private non-volatile storage device—as long as one user, out of many, plugs in an infected device to the public computer without first scanning the device for computer virus or malware, the public computer will be very likely infected, and the infected public computer will then spread the virus or malware to the storage devices of other users. The risk is even higher for public computers located in high traffic public areas like print centers, coffee shops, hotels, photo centers, etc., where it is expected that many users will use the public computers to access their storage devices in order to print documents or photos. One solution to this problem is dedicating a person to operate the public computer for these users, and to scan their storage devices before accessing their content. However, this is not economical from the business standpoint, and runs counter to the purpose of providing these public computers—to offer the users a form of self-service.
Moreover, even if the user runs a virus or malware scan over their storage devices before accessing the devices with the public computer, security loopholes still exist. First, running a scan over the storage devices, after connecting the storage devices to an infected computer, does not protect the storage devices from being infected by the computer. Second, while it is common for antivirus or malware detection software to quarantine suspicious files, the computer where the software operates nevertheless has to read the file into the computer's memory and, before undergoing the quarantining operation, the computer can still transmit the malware to other devices connected to the computer via input/output (I/O) interfaces. Third, given that typically antivirus and malware detection software can only detect virus and malware that are known, the software provides no protection when the malware or virus is newly-created and is not known.